Some Contemporary Theatre History

Sometimes I dabble in doing a little history of contemporary theatre, and I come across points that need clarifying, for instance:


Circa 1952, Beckett saw and admired Roger Blin's staging of Strindberg's The Ghost Sonata by which the pre-Godot author was so impressed that when wife Suzanne, who, with the Godot manuscript in her hand-bag, going out in the streets of Paris looking for a director to do Godot on stage, brought word that Blin finally agreed to stage Godot, Beckett instantly approved. In 1953, Blin staged the world premier of Waiting for Godot on January 5th at The Theatre de Babylone, Paris. In gratitude, Beckett dedicated his next play Endgame to Blin who played the first Hamm in the world.

On the other hand, a highly charged movement for foreign, especially German theatre, an era of retrenchment and polarisation began in the Theatre des Nations in Paris in 1954 with the guest appearance of the Berliner Ensemble's Brecht's Mother Courage, the original show in Berlin in 1949 that was attended by no lesser theatre VIPs than Eric Bentley, George Steiner and Martin Esslin. Did Beckett go to see this show? A question to be asked